Directed Questions for Structured Interviews in Requirements Determination

Requirements determination is a critical stage in systems development. Despite its importance, however, few studies have provided empirical tests of requirements determination issues (Vessey and Conger, 1994). The present study tested several questioning approaches in structured interviews: an Interrogatories technique (Couger, 1996), a Semantic questioning technique (Lauer, 1994), and a Task Characteristics technique developed as part of the current research. Experimental results showed that the Task Characteristics technique elicited a higher quantity of requirements and more detailed requirements from subjects in an application development task than did the other two approaches. Further, the three approaches elicited qualitatively similar requirements, indicating that the use of only the Task Characteristics tool is likely best for systems analysis practice